Control: tag -1 + upstream
Hi Russ,
Russ Allbery wrote (02 Sep 2013 20:23:52 GMT) :
> The windows stop refreshing, there is no progress bar or other
> visual feedback on how long the process will take, all messages from
> other conversations are ignored, and the process takes long enough
> that it looks like Pidgin has locked up.
Thank you for reporting this bug; I am glad OTR is seeing more
widespread use, and I expect your report will be helpful for other
users who encounter this problem and may wonder if Pidgin is
permanently frozen, or if the process will finish eventually.
I'm tagging this "upstream" as this user experience problem is not
specific to Debian. At least one of the OTR upstream developers (Ian
Goldberg) is subscribed to this package in the Debian BTS.
Ian, any chance that the port to Pidgin 3 fixes this problem?
If it does not, well... I'm no HCI expert at all, and I Cc'd a fellow
Tails developer who clearly knows better than me, in case they want to
have a look. Still, here is my understanding of the GNOME HIG [1]
applied to this specific problem:
a. Ideally, the key generation should be generated in ahead and in the
background, before the user even needs it; failing that, allow
users to interact with other parts of Pidgin. As Russ noted, this
may very well not be possible in the current state of Pidgin
plugin API.
b. If the length of key generation can be approximately predicted
(depends on which one of /dev/{,u}random is used, I guess), use
a measured progress bar. Else, use an indeterminate-progress
indicator [2].
I suspect that the low-hanging fruit here is the
indeterminate-progress indicator, that probably has a pretty good
"effort / user experience improvement" ratio. My experience with GTK
development is limited to Perl and Python, so I'm afraid I cannot come
up with a patch here, but I would be surprised if adding this widget
was anything but trivial (the GTK main loop cannot be frozen during
the key generation, really?).
[1] https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/
[2]
https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/controls-progress-bars.html.en#indeterminate-progress
To end with, FWIW installing haveged mitigates this problem. I suspect
using an Entropy Key also does.
Cheers,
--
intrigeri
| GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc
| OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
